1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved computer system and in particular to computer software and more particularly to web browser software. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method and apparatus for filtering and previewing data.
2. Description of Related Art
The xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d is a globally accessible network of computers that collectively provide a large amount and variety of information to users. From services of the Internet such as the World Wide Web (or simply, the xe2x80x9cwebxe2x80x9d), users may retrieve or xe2x80x9cdownloadxe2x80x9d data from Internet network sites and display the data that includes information presented as text in various fonts, graphics, images, and the like having an appearance intended by the publisher. As the information revolution has exploded, more and more information is available through the internet. However, finding particular pieces of information out of the millions of xe2x80x9cweb sitesxe2x80x9d available can be daunting.
One way of sorting through this mass of information to find what is of interest for a particular user is through the use of xe2x80x9csearch enginesxe2x80x9d. Search engines are software written to search, among the millions of web sites, for certain key words or criteria entered by a user, and to return to the user a list of links (references to other HTML pages) to the sites that the search engine determines to be most relevant to the criteria entered by the user. Different search engines use different methods of determining the relevance of web sites, but most use some sort of quantitative method that determines the relevance of a site based on how many times the key words appear in that particular site.
Search engines typically return only a list of links to relevant sites with perhaps a short verbal description of the site. Often times, this list does not provide sufficient information to enable one to make an intelligent decision as to whether to follow the link. Thus, the user is left with the time consuming task of sorting through the links returned by the search engine to determine which of these is the best match. Furthermore, no mechanism is present for a user to determine, based on the search engine results, whether the site is still active or if it has been removed. This problem can be seen by referring to FIG. 1, which depicts a screen image of a returned search result from Altavista. Each link includes only a brief description of the site, but no indication of whether the link is still good or whether the link contains an excessive quantity of broken links within it.
Similar problems exist with regard to following links from one web page to another (sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cweb surfingxe2x80x9d). Often times, users find the information they are looking for by following links on web pages, but the same problem exist here as with search engines. Many times the links will have only short descriptions about the contents of the web page to which they link. Furthermore, many times a web page will contain a dead link and there is no way the user can determine this except by trial and error.
Therefore, it would be beneficial for Internet users to have a tool to enable them to make more informed decisions about which links to follow.
The present invention provides a method of browsing the Internet. According to a preferred embodiment, a browser retrieves a web page for presentation to a user. While the web page is being presented, using one or more background threads, the web page is parsed for a set of links to a set of linked web pages and that set of linked pages are retrieved. The set of linked pages is parsed for criteria set by the user. In response to finding the criteria on one or more of the linked pages, the presentation of the first page is changed, ideally in real time as a user watched, to indicate the presence of the criteria on respective linked page.
In another embodiment, at least two different criteria are set by the user and the presentation of the web page is altered in different manners depending on which of the different criteria are found on respective pages.
In another embodiment, a thumbnail of each of the linked pages is generated and an indicator over a respective thumbnail is provided to indicate the presence of the criteria on a respective linked page.
In another embodiment, the linked pages are contained in a local database on a standalone machine.